Patient Satisfaction With Medical Services Provided at Unani Medicine Hospital, Bengaluru: A Cross-Sectional Study

Abstract

In medical care, patient satisfaction is a key indicator of the quality of care. Many studies have agreed on the fact that measuring patient satisfaction is a useful tool for determining the effectiveness of health care delivery and the quality of medical care provided. Hence, present study was aimed to determine the level of patient’s satisfaction with the quality of medical care services rendered in a teaching hospital of Unani medicine. A hospital-based cross-sectional study was conducted at the National Institute of Unani Medicine Hospital, Bengaluru, from April 2019 to October 2019 on 500 patients sampled from various service delivery points of the health facility. Data were gathered through exit interviews of patients after obtaining their written informed consent. A predesigned and pretested questionnaire on patient satisfaction patient satisfaction questionnaire (PSQ-18) was used as a study tool. The overall mean patient satisfaction score was 4.82 ± 0.23. Mean satisfaction was highest in the interpersonal manner (4.94) and communication (4.94), followed by time spent with the doctor (4.91), technical quality (4.87), financial aspect (4.87), accessibility and convenience (4.65), and least in general satisfaction (4.54). No sociodemographic variables were found to correlate significantly with satisfaction score ( P > .05). In clinical variables, treatment effectiveness was found to be significantly associated with the satisfaction score ( P = .002). The study found that overall patients were highly satisfied with the medical services provided by the health facility. Furthermore, the study finds that treatment effectiveness has a more significant effect on patients’ satisfaction compared with other factors.